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Tenor Juan de Leon (M.M. 2010) won the district level of the prestigious Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in the Gulf Coast Region and will continue to the next round (the Gulf Coast Region Finals) on January 17 in New Orleans. 

De Leon won the district level competition with his performance of “Ah mes amis, quel jour de fete” from Donizetti’s La fille du regiment, famous for its series of nine high-C’s in a row, and Mozart’s haunting aria Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön from The Magic Flute.����

Meanwhile, he has been invited by the prestigious New York summer opera company to be a young artist in its 2010 season.

De Leon, a student of Meadows Professor of Voice Virginia Dupuy, is a former winner of the vocal competition of the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Texoma region, and he is currently one of the three featured performers in the Dallas Opera/SMU Emerging Artists Program, presenting the show “Opera in a Box: Follow Your Dreams” to schools throughout DFW.